New club help

New high school teams looking for advice should post here.
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tbeneka
Kimahri
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New club help

Post by tbeneka »

Hello all,

Well I'm going to be a 10th grader next school year and I want to start an academic team at my school. It's a boarding school in Connecticut called the Taft School, but from what I've looked at online it seems that there arn't very many schools which compete in academic bowls here. I went to a school in Georgia and was in the academic team there for 3 years so I'm pretty familiar with academic quiz teams, but this school doesn't have it and I think it would be really great if I could start one. I just need to know what I need to do to get started, and things like that.

Thanks
Tise Ben-Eka
The Taft School '17
Duluth middle'12
Hull middle '13
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Important Bird Area
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Re: New club help

Post by Important Bird Area »

Welcome to the forums!

You can find the New England tournament calendar here. In particular, you should plan to attend Yale's fall and spring tournaments and the Connecticut Invitational at E. O. Smith in February.
Jeff Hoppes
President, Northern California Quiz Bowl Alliance
former HSQB Chief Admin (2012-13)
VP for Communication and history subject editor, NAQT
Editor emeritus, ACF

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tbeneka
Kimahri
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Re: New club help

Post by tbeneka »

Okay thank you so much
Tise Ben-Eka
The Taft School '17
Duluth middle'12
Hull middle '13
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UlyssesInvictus
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Re: New club help

Post by UlyssesInvictus »

In addition to the calendar of events, I think there are other threads dangling around somewhere that describe the bureaucratic processes of starting a club. I don't know where they are, but I can summarize off the top of my head the problems and solutions most new clubs seem to have to face.

1. Sponsorship
This depends on how your school regulates clubs. Typically, as long as you can find a teacher sponsor you're good, but you may have to jump through other hoops to officially get the club sanctioned. As far as finding sponsors goes, I'd recommend starting with history/English teachers, since in my experience they're more willing and find in more kinship with the quizbowl subjects, but you should be willing to ask around as much as necessary to get the sponsor. You may not need a sponsor at all, but having one will probably help with funding, having a classroom to practice, and having a driving-capable chaperones when parents don't have time.

**On a related note, sometimes your sponsor can't go with you to tournaments, which means you won't be officially sanctioned--in which case, you should by all means still go, but you may have to use a pseudonym so that you don't piss your school off by unofficially aligning yourself with them.

2. Funding
Again, this depends on your school regulations. Your school may give most of the funding once the club is sanctioned, but you might also be forced to run food sales or the like to earn money. It's not unusual for some teams to pay out of pocket when playing unofficially and without money from the school. Buzzers are good investments here, both for practice and because the discount for tournament fees will add up over time.

3. Recruitment
Do whatever works here. Typically, people seem to find a small group of friends first to create the nucleus of the team, and then start advertising around the school with fliers or at activity fairs to attract more people. Word of mouth and personal appeals along the lines of "hey there's this cool new club we're starting you should come hang out and see what it's like" are important. (On that line of thought, regular practices are definitely important--for the sake of improving as a team and of discipline so that the team doesn't fall apart the moment it gets started).

4. Attending Tournaments
Jeff already linked you the tournament schedule; you should keep an eye out for novice tournaments that use easy sets like certain housewrites and NAQT IS sets (only at first!--you don't want to play on easy sets forever, there's no improvement there). Set up carpools for the long drives (I'm not that familiar with how far away Taft is from other New England schools, but you shouldn't be warded off by the threat of 2-3 hour drives). Make sure you have your funding in line, and contact hosting schools about attending once tournaments are announced. Besides that schedule, these forums are where you'll find individual announcements for every tournament.

5. Practice
Again, regular team meetings are important. You'll also find a wealth of resources that can be studied alone, like quizbowlpackets.com (archived packets free for use), quinterest.org (question lookup), these forums (theory is discussed fairly often here, and of course, textbooks from class.

That's all I can think off the top of my head, but I'm sure there's more to be said on the subject.
Raynor Kuang
quizdb.org
Harvard 2017, TJHSST 2013
I wrote GRAPHIC and FILM
tbeneka
Kimahri
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Re: New club help

Post by tbeneka »

Wow, Thank you sooo much that was a lot of information. It's funn tI never really thought how how much work actually goes into making this club possible. Anyway thanks.
Tise Ben-Eka
The Taft School '17
Duluth middle'12
Hull middle '13
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vinteuil
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Re: New club help

Post by vinteuil »

Yale is always very happy to have new schools at our tournaments! FACT, our fall tournament, is going to be on a more novice-friendy set, so that should be perfect.
Jacob R., ex-Chicago
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Re: New club help

Post by High Dependency Unit »

Regarding tournaments in your area, Uconn hosted SCOP Novice last year, Williams College mirrored LIST, E.O. Smith holds the Connecticut Invitational each year, Yale hosts two tournaments, and the Connecticut state championship was just down route 8 from your school.
Michael Borecki
Middlesex Middle '13,
Darien (co-captain) '17,
Bowdoin College (club president) '21
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